Rubber Band Powered Car
Project History: Throughout two few weeks, my group and I built a working rubber band powered car. Originally my group had planned to use balloons to power our car. It went about a meter or two until we put a 250 gram weight on it. After that my group tried making a rat trap powered car. It worked, but not as well as we had hoped it to. We continued working on it here and there and got it to go between three and four meters, but we didn't think we could get it to reach 5 meters, so in the mean time we constructed an rubber band power car that was fast and efficient. We got it to go 5 meters (its destination) and it was able to carry more than 1000grams when it was suppose to only carry 250 grams! One reason it worked so well is because we used balsa wood which is very light and flexible yet very sturdy.
Reflection: Over all I thought my group worked very well together! We had a lot of problems that we ran into while building our car, but that was mainly because we did not have a full design to start with and we were a little bit uncertain still about how we were going to build our car, but I think it would have been better if we had more time. Time management was also a problem and we found ourselves working up to the last day, so I think we should have had a schedule or planned things out better. I really liked how we didn't give up and am glad we ended up with a working car! I thought it was a great project and I think I learned a lot about the parts of a car and how to build a car with little materials.
Materials:
-15 Rubber Bands
-8 CD's
-4 Round pieces of cardboard
-1 long piece of cardboard
-2 thin pieces of balsa wood
- Duck Tape
-Hot Glue
-1 Paperclip
Concepts:
Elastic Potential Energy-energy due to compression or expansion of elastic material
Spring Constant- measure of how firm the spring is
Kinetic Energy- energy due to motion
Pressure- amount of force per unit area
Gravitational Potential Energy- energy due to gravitational pull and height
Energy- the ability to do work
Friction- force in opposition to motion
Power- rate at which work is done
Thermal Energy-energy lost in the transfer of potential energy to kinetic energy
Project History: Throughout two few weeks, my group and I built a working rubber band powered car. Originally my group had planned to use balloons to power our car. It went about a meter or two until we put a 250 gram weight on it. After that my group tried making a rat trap powered car. It worked, but not as well as we had hoped it to. We continued working on it here and there and got it to go between three and four meters, but we didn't think we could get it to reach 5 meters, so in the mean time we constructed an rubber band power car that was fast and efficient. We got it to go 5 meters (its destination) and it was able to carry more than 1000grams when it was suppose to only carry 250 grams! One reason it worked so well is because we used balsa wood which is very light and flexible yet very sturdy.
Reflection: Over all I thought my group worked very well together! We had a lot of problems that we ran into while building our car, but that was mainly because we did not have a full design to start with and we were a little bit uncertain still about how we were going to build our car, but I think it would have been better if we had more time. Time management was also a problem and we found ourselves working up to the last day, so I think we should have had a schedule or planned things out better. I really liked how we didn't give up and am glad we ended up with a working car! I thought it was a great project and I think I learned a lot about the parts of a car and how to build a car with little materials.
Materials:
-15 Rubber Bands
-8 CD's
-4 Round pieces of cardboard
-1 long piece of cardboard
-2 thin pieces of balsa wood
- Duck Tape
-Hot Glue
-1 Paperclip
Concepts:
Elastic Potential Energy-energy due to compression or expansion of elastic material
Spring Constant- measure of how firm the spring is
Kinetic Energy- energy due to motion
Pressure- amount of force per unit area
Gravitational Potential Energy- energy due to gravitational pull and height
Energy- the ability to do work
Friction- force in opposition to motion
Power- rate at which work is done
Thermal Energy-energy lost in the transfer of potential energy to kinetic energy
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